Hyperfy's Market Cap Skyrockets to 280M in Half a Day, Is the Resurgence of the Metaverse Concept with "AI+" Underway?

The Metaverse land project Hyperfy, launched 2 years ago, airdropped its native token this morning and swiftly surged to a $2.8 billion market capitalization within 10 hours of trading, with a daily trading volume reaching $80 million.

In today's rapidly evolving AI Agent market, its grand vision inevitably invites comparisons to the past Metaverse concept. Trends are cyclical, just like the market, circling back to the Metaverse concept once again revitalized by AI. Despite being mentioned countless times and failing just as many times, the market seems unwilling to let go of this cyberpunk-esque future concept, as if an invisible hand is inexorably driving us towards that technological singularity. Is Hyperfy a reheating of old ideas under the guise of AI, or is it the fertile ground for the Metaverse resurgence?

AI-Powered, NFT Summer Metaverse Land Project Resurfaces in the Market

During the 2022 NFT Summer, a wave of Metaverse land development projects emerged, including Decentraland, Cryptovoxels, and Sandbox. Today, a project reminiscent of those Metaverse platforms from the past—Hyperfy—has appeared in the market once again.

Hyperfy is a Metaverse platform designed to enable anyone to easily create rich, immersive virtual worlds. Hyperfy can be accessed instantly through any web browser, including mobile devices and VR headsets like Meta Quest 3. Similar to other land-based projects, owning its land grants ownership with built-in tools to create almost any kind of scene, including galleries, venues, clubs, stores, portfolios, educational experiences, games, leisure spaces. Users can directly import 2D and 3D NFTs from their wallets or drag and drop 3D models, images, audio, and videos into the world. Everything happening in this world occurs in real-time.

If this path continues, it doesn't differ much from other Metaverse land projects until it encounters ai16z. Just this morning, Hyperfy tweeted a sudden announcement of its rebranding, transforming from a Metaverse platform into an immersive space platform empowered by AI agents. It made all its tools and layers open-source and integrated with the Eliza architecture AI Agent in its V2 version. This means it has transformed from a Metaverse to Sigma of AI Agents, a limitless Metaverse interacting with Agents.

With signals of Shaw's on-chain address purchase, coupled with explicit cooperative promotions through multiple tweets from ai16z community members, the market's bullish sentiment towards this new concept reached its peak, evolving into sustained upward market value. Subsequently, an ai16z DAO member, Jin, revealed the true value of this project with a thread detailing how he and Metamike had helped enhance Hyperfy's project documentation and provided several usage scenarios over the past few months.

Scenario One: AI Board

An AI agent trained in working groups, different projects, or user case studies can discuss proposals and assist in decision-making, ready for integration with ElizaOS in V2.

Scenario Two: Stonk Exchange

One can directly observe real-time trades by an AI agent in a stock exchange-like scenario, with real-time data on the screen possibly being finalized + optimized within a week.

Scenario Three: Interoperable Pet

tubbycatsnft is a CC0 NFT. Last fall, the team completed the assembly of all 20k 3D models, optimizing them for a small local-first model, making it a good container for the optimized models more suitable for the future Hyperfy VR pet system.

More Scenarios: pmairca's "parody Marc" meeting room, AI as judges in a game show world, 3D data visualization like "ai16z Treasury Wallet Visualization," and cryptocurrency vending machines.

It is not difficult to imagine. The difference in this AI + Metaverse concept compared to the previous one is the addition of the AI Agent variable. This makes the narrative more practical, as current hardware technology cannot replicate the same sensory experience in a virtual world as in the real world. However, for AI Agents, this is their reality. In this platform, AI Agents can interact most intuitively with AI Agents and humans with AI Agents, whereas before, they were just data code or textual images. In contrast to a vast Metaverse, these smaller worlds in Hyperfy resemble a multiverse for AI Agents, fulfilling the fantasy world in your and the AI's minds, like an AI version of Figama.

Before Hyperfy skyrocketed, founder Ash Connell released a token named Shaw on November 11th. Later, upon accessing the Hyperfy platform, one can find Shaw's milady image existing within a world, although real-time conversations are not possible yet, the purpose is evident. It is to showcase an AI Agent within an ai16z ecosystem in the upcoming V2.

On the other hand, apart from the frenzy of posting Hyperfy-related content, Shaw also passionately expressed his feelings about the mysterious community he has been a part of for several years — M3 "Metaverse Makers." Interestingly, this name is similar to the American street slang "You know what I am saying," as if asking us, the audience, if we are ready to understand the engine of the 3D AI Agent world they will bring or a larger vision. Are you ready to understand?

On the banner of M3's Twitter, there is a list of virtual character names, including today's launch of Hyperfy's founder ASH, Jin who helped upgrade its product deck, and the excellent 3D artist 7OROY, among many other well-known figures. It's hard not to notice a hint of a conspiracy to create a huge amount of energy among them.

Will they be able to bring a true Metaverse with AI or will it be another massive bubble? BlockBeats will continue to observe and track.